A recent trip to Fantasycon here in the UK gave me the chance to meet up with some of the smaller, independent publishers that are flourishing now that print on demand and other such book production opportunities are becoming more affordable. It's easy to be snobbish about this area of publishing and it is not untrue that vanity press and self-publishing produces some pretty crack-pot material. At the same time, there are those folks who are producing quality fiction with excellent production on limited budgets and in the process are bringing forward the next generation of writers, allowing them to hone their skills and gain notoriety.

One such outfit is Morrigan Books, a relatively new name in this area. Publisher Mark Deniz had three fascinating titles on offer at the con, the first of which is this, a collection of stories by Gary McMahon, a British writer who impressed me with his novella Rough Cut, released a year or two by Pendragon Press (another excellent independent publisher run by Welshman Christopher Teague). How to Make Monsters is a tidy trade paperback and is available directly from the publisher's web site (which I note is highly professional and extremely impressive).